Food for thought

[homegrown]

Sometimes when I look around at all the damage done to our planet by technology I begin to think that the industrial revolution was a mistake and that we were meant to follow a much more organic path.

I realise that there advantages to technology but i wonder about the longterm cost

[MuddyWitch]

It's not the technology that's the problem, it's the ape men & women that wheld it that cause the grief!

MW

[grahoom]

It's not the technology that's the problem, it's the ape men & women that wheld it that cause the grief!

MW

couldn't agree more!

Richard Buckmister Fuller was a man who had such great visions regarding technology and how it could be used to improve the lives of humanity with out destroying the environment and planet.

But alas it seems a lot of what he said fell on deaf ears!

But - there is an emergence of people who are looking at using technology in a harmonious way with nature. The problem is that technology sometimes seems to either be over engineered for the job, or has been developed to do a job quickly, but doesn't look at the WHOLE aspect of the job.

One example which drives me mad - is that of hedge rows. A lot are butchered by a huge mechanical beast, which does the job quick but does the job so badly that eventually a fence has to be erected when if a hedge was laid correctly then the hedge would last for hundreds of years, and provide a wonderful environment for the birds and beasts that would essentially benefit the farmer by being their pest control...

(I'll stop the rambling there).

[grahamhobbs]

Nothing wrong with technology it's just exploited by people who want/have to make a quick buck. Technology costs money, capital. In this society capital has to make a profit, otherwise the money goes elsewhere, where it will make a profit. So the whole of society is driven by this need to make a profit, not to advance mankind, not to make things better for everyone and the long term sustainability of the planet, but essentially to add to the fortunes of a relatively small number of people / corporations who can dominate the market by their already fabulous wealth (corporate box at Chelsea football ground £1million per season). But all down the line, everyone has to do the same, compete, willingly or not.
Fortunately some people swim against the tide, harnessing technology in appropriate ways...

[KathyLauren]

It's not the technology per se. The problem is the idea that we can take without putting back. Sustainability requires restoring resources when we are finished with them.

I think of it as the "gate rule". When out hiking, if you come across a gate in a fence, the rule is that you always leave it the way you found it: open if it was open; shut if it was shut. Imagine the chaos if a shepherd were driving a herd of sheep through a gate that he had intentionally left open, only to find that some dimwit had closed it. Or, imagine if you opened a gate and allowed a herd of cattle to escape. You always leave gates as you found them.

The same should apply to everything we do. Leave it as you found it. So, if you remove a million gallons of clean water per day from a river for some industrial purpose, you have to put back a million gallons of clean water per day. If you dump a million tons of CO2 into the air, you have to remove a million tons of CO2 to leave the air as you found it. If you cut a 400-year-old tree, you have to grow a new 400-year-old tree. (Yes, some long-range business planning is required.)

The concept of sustainability requires us to rethink everything we do. In particular, it requires us to throw away many of our cherished economic models and invent new ones. It doesn't mean we can't have technology, but it does change the way we go about creating, using and disposing of that technology. And that will impact the kinds of technology we can consider.

[anarchistinslippers]

If you have a thousand monkeys working at a thousand typewriters, one of them will come up with Shakespeare.

The other 999 will come up with the internet.